Bad weather may be linked to one North Bay death

An investigation is underway to see if the bad weather is linked to the death of a person in the North Bay.

February 9, 2014 7:47:49 PM PST

by Sergio Quintana

MILL VALLEY, Calif. --

An investigation is underway to see if the bad weather is linked to the death of a person in the North Bay.

At about 10 a.m. Sunday, Mill Valley police were called to Greenwood Way, which is in a neighborhood that is very steep in the hills and has very narrow streets. An SUV had gone down a gulley.

At this point, police are still trying to figure out if the weather did contribute to that crash.

After some searching a few hours later, they found a dead body in the backyard of a home nearby.

"The plates on the vehicle do come back to a resident in the area, but again we can't confirm their location at this time," Lt. Jaqueline Graf-Reis said.

She adds, "Could it be weather-related? We don't know that. Again, it could be a medical reason, it could have been other type of reason, or it could have been a mechanical failure. We just don't know right now."

"Just in the last couple hours they blocked our driveway and they towed a truck down," neighbor Patrick Bryant said. "And the Marin County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Team was up in the hill above my neighbor's house."

The search and rescue teams were called in to help a couple hours after the vehicle was first spotted. They used their rappelling equipment to search the steep hills in that neighborhood.

Police describe the body found as an older or elderly person. But right now they're not able to determine if that person was the driver of the overturned SUV and they're not sure if there was anyone else in that vehicle.

The Marin County Coroner's Office was at the home Sunday evening to collect the body. They are going to try to determine a cause of death. They're also apparently trying to see if anyone else was in the vehicle when it went into the gulley.